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MEXICAN MAYOR ASSASSINATED ON SECOND DAY IN OFFICE

(P1) The GOVERNOR of the Mexican state in which a MAYOR was shot dead a day after taking office has promised that he will “not RELENT” in bringing her killers to JUSTICE.

(P2) Graco Ramírez, governor of Morelos state, blamed “criminals” for the killing of the Temixco mayor, Gisela Mota. He did not say which CARTEL or gang might be responsible.

(P3) Mota, 33, was murdered when four suspects attacked her home, the state security commissioner, Jesús Alberto Capella, said. Two suspects were killed and three others captured after they fired on police and soldiers from a van, he added.

(P4) Morelos’s ATTORNEY GENERAL, Javier Pérez Durón, gave few details of the suspects’ identities, only saying they had been linked to other crimes. Capella later said that the suspects include two teenagers, aged 17 and 18, and a 32-year-old woman.

(P5) On Sunday, Ramírez set the Mexican flag to HALF-STAFF and declared three days of MOURNING.

(P6) “We will not return to how things were before,” he wrote on Twitter. “There will be no IMPUNITY.”

(P7) Ramón Castro Castro, the Roman Catholic BISHOP of Cuernavaca, held mass at Mota’s home on Sunday and later spoke CRITICALLY of a state where some areas are in the control of ORGANIZED CRIME.

(P8) “It was a warning to the other mayors,” Castro said to reporters. “If you don’t COOPERATE with organized crime, look at what will happen to you. It’s to scare them.”

(P9) Agustin Basave, the president of the PRD (Democratic Revolutionary Party), said, “During the current ADMINISTRATION [of President Enrique Pena Nieto], over 40 mayors have been ASSASSINATED. Mayors are extremely VULNERABLE.”

(P10) Last year, the mayor-elect of Jerecuaro was shot dead by gunmen at a bus station, and a mayoral candidate in Guerrero was found DECAPITATED. A threat to others was written on a sheet over her body.

(P11) About 100,000 people live in Temixco, about 60 miles south of Mexico City and near Cuernavaca, the state capital, where gangs regularly stage KIDNAPPINGS. A 2015 study by the Citizen Council for Public Safety and Criminal Justice found that Cuernavaca had replaced Acapulco as the most violent city in Mexico.

(P12) Mota was SWORN INTO office on New Year’s Day. She served in Mexico’s national congress from 2012 to 2015.

(P13) Graco Ramírez remembered Mota as his “young and dear friend.”

(P14) Basave said, “Gisela Mota was a strong and brave woman. She declared that her fight against crime would be direct and HEAD-ON.”

If you found the passage difficult to read or had problems understanding specific words or idiomatic expressions, please discuss them with your tutor. The following discussion questions should be answered in your own words and with your own arguments.

Briefly summarize the content of the article in your own words.

Women are now ROUTINELY targeted in drug-related violence in Mexico. Do you think that this is more SHOCKING than violence that only involves men?

What could the Mexican government do to protect mayors and other PUBLIC SERVANTS?

Why do criminals in some places feel that they can act with impunity?

What was the worst act of political violence in your country?

EXPRESSIONS TO PRACTICE:

What do the following expressions mean? Practice using each expression in a sentence; extra points if you can use it in conversation.